This invention relates to cage systems for the raising of poultry and, more particularly, for the raising of chicks into pullets and the like.
It is customary, particularly in the raising of pullets, to confine the birds within a cage, suitable provisions being made for watering, feeding and manure disposal. The chicks, ordinarily, remain in the cages for approximately twenty weeks, having been debeaked and redistributed at the end of the first ten day period.
Poultry houses of the type wherein pullets are raised are, of course, expensive to construct, and it is highly desirable to utilize space with maximum efficiency. Factors affecting such efficiency, however, include not only bird density but feed and energy efficiency, serviceability, equipment cost, maintenance and the like. Optimally, by combining these and other such factors, a particular group of chicks is reared with maximum efficiency.
Many widely differing types of cage systems have been proposed for the raising of the chicks. These include the present Assignee's FLAT DECK and TRI-DECK CHIK-EZE cage systems. The FLAT DECK system, briefly, consists of a single tier of back-to-back cages suitably suspended above a manure pit or the like. The feed troughs traverse the bottoms of the cage at a central location, a swingable barrier of the general type hereinafter discussed being provided to reduce the cage size during the initial period the birds are contained therein. After this period has passed, the barrier is retracted, permitting the birds to have access to the feed trough from either side thereof.
The FLAT DECK CHIK-EZE system has achieved considerable commercial success and, certainly, its use results in high quality pullets. It is relatively inefficient, however, from a bird density and energy standpoint. There has also been a marked tendency to waste feed during the period prior to debeaking, since the birds tend to push the same through the barrier from whence it drops into the manure pit.
The TRI-DECK CHIK-EZE cage system includes three tiers of aligned rows of cages. The feed troughs are positioned along the front of each of the cages. Complicated scraping mechanisms are required to remove manure from above the lowest and middle tiers of cages. While this system is highly efficient from a bird density standpoint, the facts that the feed is accessible to the birds from only one side of the cage and the significant initial investment and maintenance costs required to maintain it present significant drawbacks.
Cage arrangements other than those discussed above have been utilized. One such arrangement involves the placement of two rows of cages directly over two other rows of cages such that the floors of the top cages form the ceilings of the lower cages. While such a system, again, is quite efficient from a bird density standpoint, the fact that the manure from the birds in the upper cages is constantly falling into the food, etc., in the lower cages makes the system unsatisfactory. Lighting and ventilation problems in the lower cages, along with the difficulty in removing birds therefrom, also markedly detract from the efficacy of this system.
Another prior art proposal has been to laterally offset two bottom rows of cages completely from two adjacent top rows of cages positioned thereabove. Feed troughs, in this system, were placed at the exterior of each cage. While the system has many advantages insofar as lighting, ventilation and the like are concerned, it is bad from bird density and food accessibility standpoints.
Another problem which is encountered with cage systems of the type described is the tendency of the birds to spill feed from the trough. This has been remedied in the TRI-DECK CHIK-EZE cage and cages similar thereto by the provision of a permanent metal feed guard extending from the outer extremity of the feed trough up the front of the cage. This guard prevents birds from knocking food out of and over the trough into the aisleway when eating. The use of such a guard, however, has been limited to cages having the feed troughs on one side thereof. While the guard in these cages has served to retard food spillage, the fact that the feed trough is on the exterior of the cage prevents optimal feeding access which is obtained only when the trough is in the center of the cage and accessible by birds confined on either side of it.